WvW Roaming Professions

I need help choosing a profession for the role I want to play in WvW. I usually play WvW alone or in small groups. I don't like to take part in the giant Zerg that is always roaming, and try to either roam between points and find smaller fights. I usually am by myself or a small group of 2-5.

Engi, Thief, Warrior, Ranger - (in order of my preference) Play them a bit in spvp to get a feel of what you might like. Check out their respective forums for WvW builds. Thief is the most mobile of the lot, but IMO engi is more fun.

Engi's your typical commando for that. And if you count the permaswift ability through traits, they're also the most mobile. It's a shame I don't see much if any of them at all, Engi is the only character I play, main, and master, and I doubt I'll ever change.

The only issue with a solo roaming mesmer is mobility. You are NOT going to escape people chasing you if they want to catch you. Other classes, however, can. Mesmers are much better suited to roam with friends who can keep swiftness on them.

Thanks for this discussion! I find the small scale skirmishes for sentries, supply camps, and jumping puzzles to be alot more fun that zerging. So, this really helped choose a profession that would do well at that role, even if alone or in pairs.

I went with Engineer based on your feedback. I am not a fan of the Thief mechanics, but I can see that as an excellent choice.

I have been roaming as a Guardian with two others and it works out well, provided the others can provide the ranged DPS that I can't.

I've hardly played WvWvW, but think hot join presents an interesting analogy, since you have no way to know what you're going to be paired up with or facing. What I'm going to say derives from that.

You can't be prepared for everything, no matter how much you spec to be. In that line, I would say it's a meta call, e.g. be what opponents are least likely to be prepared for. When you cut your demands to only mobility and maybe burst prevention, a lot of classes/builds could be viable, depending on your skill/playstyle.

If you have buddies to hang with I don't see why this would be an issue though. Just play the class you like and create a synergistic team build that works for you.

The only issue with a solo roaming mesmer is mobility. You are NOT going to escape people chasing you if they want to catch you. Other classes, however, can. Mesmers are much better suited to roam with friends who can keep swiftness on them.

Engie and necro both have perma swiftness and panic-mode skills to tank focus-fire. Thief on the other hand is good at escaping, but it's only good at that. At least for me, enemy thieves in WvW are like background ornaments. Very weak when outnumbered. Mesmer is probably best at confrontation, but very slow for a WvW roamer.

Ele, engie and necro solo supply camps fast as well. All the other classes are too squishy or too slow.

99% of the time you will win a fight using 3 skills top...usually 2. if you are hopelessly bad at the game and cant do jack with any other prof...no worries! the thief is custom tailored for you!
99% of the time you will kill someone without even rendering visible due to culling
99% of the time your target will be a glass cannon and will die in 1, max 2 seconds without ever, ever, ever having had a chance of defending himself
99% of the time when you gank someone stranded, he will try to run away instead of fighthing back...and noone runs from a 22222222 spamming thief
99% of the time if (somehow) the gank attempt turns bad for you, you can reset the fight on a whim and get away whistling to yourself

99% of the time your prey will rage at the inmensely shocking overpowered-ness of the thief class and the utter passivity of ANet regarding it...

All it takes is 1 thief or warrior in the enemy group and you're not getting away unless you manage to fool them with decoy.

Na, it can be done fairly well if the group isn't gigantic. The key is to stealth and run towards the zerg, not away. This is also true for hot join zergs. You can also use the look back button and cripple your chasers with iberserker. Before you could also use signet of domination, but that got nerffed.But really, it's best if you have a thief in your group who can use nice, very long lasting area stealths.